Chapter 6 : Half-Human, Half-Character

Chapter 6: Half-Human, Half-Character

At first, he had been mistaken because of the existence of martial arts and the like. He had thought that an abnormal phenomenon had occurred in Murim Online due to a game bug.

However.

After observing for several weeks, Dong Bong-su became certain that this was not the case.

This place was reality. That was certain. There was no longer any room for doubt.

He could not understand the principle of how he had come to this place, but the fact that this place was reality was something that could never be denied. He felt pain, lived vividly, moved, and exuded a rough wildness. To the extent that every time he faced Machil, it was difficult to suppress the urge to kill him.

Was Machil a player? Or an NPC (Non Player Character)?

Of course, he was neither.

There were several people he had met here. The first was Machil, and occasionally, Machil brought other people with him. They would mount their horses with lightning-like movements and disappear from the stable.

Every time that happened, Dong Bong-su checked their eyes. It was a task to see whether or not they had emotions. All of them were moving ‘alive,’ each carrying their own emotions. Those with such eyes could never be NPCs.

Then what about himself? What was he?

A human? A player? Was he even alive?

Dong Bong-su did not really know either. Only that he was different from the others here. That one thing alone was certain. They all moved like humans, but there was a decisive difference.

That was the holographic letters, ‘Murim Online.’

In other words, he—Dong Bong-su—was ‘half-human, half-character.’

He had the ability to open all the windows that were possible in Murim Online: the Status window, Skill window, Inventory, Map, and so on. However, not all functions worked normally. Most of the windows were displayed as ‘?’ due to errors, and the only window that functioned 100% properly was the Inventory window.

He did not yet know how to use anything other than the Inventory window. That was something he would gradually figure out in the future. After all, just as it said Lv.1 in the Status window, he was still only a level 1 Novice.

Swish.

Dong Bong-su quietly raised his upper body. The wound on his chest throbbed, but it was not enough to prevent him from moving. He slowly untied the straw rope pressing down on his chest. Then he wiped off the thin porridge stuck to the rope and put it back into the bowl. It was still hot and hurt his hands and chest, but he did not care. Once most of the porridge was back in the bowl, he lifted it and poured it into his mouth in one gulp.

It was food worse than what dogs on modern Earth ate, but Dong Bong-su did not particularly mind. From the beginning, food to him had merely been something eaten to survive, not something meant to be enjoyed for its taste.

For him, the best food was a nutritionally balanced diet. Still from that perspective, this thin porridge was the absolute worst food imaginable. Thin porridge had almost no calories. To fully recover stamina after eating something like this would take quite a long time. That was why he had prepared separate food for rapid recovery.

“Inven­tory.”

A translucent inventory hologram appeared before his eyes. In truth, this inventory was also quite different from the one that had existed in the original Murim Online. The original inventory window had been a format where one item fit into one slot.

However.

Here, it had changed from a slot-based system to a space-based system. The current inventory allowed him to inspect every corner inside according to the movement of Dong Bong-su’s hand.

The inside of the inventory was extremely spacious. He could not know exactly how large it was until he tried filling it completely, but by his estimation, it seemed to be at least about a hundred square meters.

This was the first rule of this new ‘game’ that he had discovered.

Inside the inventory were several hundred ants, dozens of fly larvae—namely, maggots—and several hundred unidentified insects.

That was right.

The food he had prepared for rapid stamina recovery was insects. Insects took up little volume while being extremely high in protein. For this reason, were they not being spotlighted as future food even on modern Earth?

Given the same feed, one could raise several times more insects than cows or pigs, and their nutrients were vastly superior to cows or pigs of the same volume. Naturally, to Dong Bong-su, insects were an excellent food source. Low volume, high protein. That description alone was sufficient for insects.

Without hesitation, he pulled out all the insects inside the inventory. Without discriminating by type, he grabbed a handful and dumped them into his mouth.

Crunch.

An unpleasant sound echoed throughout the stable, but that was only by ordinary standards; to Dong Bong-su, it was a sound of no consequence.

For a while, Dong Bong-su shut down his brain activity and focused solely on eating. All of this, too, was evidence that the world he was currently in was a game, yet at the same time not a game. In games, one could neither eat food nor relieve oneself, nor did sexual organs exist.

Yet for the past two weeks since awakening here, he had not missed a single day of eating thin porridge and insects, defecating and urinating. Every morning, without fail, he also experienced an erection.

“New Murim Online.”

That was the name Dong Bong-su had given to this ‘game.’ As mentioned earlier, he did not know where this place was. However, he clearly remembered the last words spoken by the operator of Murim Online.

— Then, we wish you an enjoyable time together with Murim Online…….

If they told him to enjoy it, then he would enjoy it.

Dong Bong-su had absolutely no attachment to the real world. Comfortable mechanized civilization, flashy material civilization, forests of gray buildings, an ultra-high-speed broadband internet world. All of that was meaningless to him. As long as he could maintain his own unique hobby, it did not matter to him what kind of world it was.

Above all else, he liked this world.

Contrary to the clean air, this place seemed like a merciless world. From Machil and several other people, and from the movements of the murim warriors he occasionally saw, he could glimpse this world’s ‘ruthlessness’ and its law of ‘the survival of the strong.’

If it were here, would he not be able to indulge in his hobbies to his heart’s content? No, from the start, there was no need to hide his true nature. Creatures like himself—carnivores—would surely be roaming freely through the jungle outside, known as the Martial World.

Thus, he named this place ‘New Murim Online.’

A game for true predators—New Murim Online.

Dong Bong-su slowly raised his body. He felt his ribs rattle, but he stood up from his spot as carefully as possible.

There were surely still many insects hiding in the stable. Each and every one of them would be used to aid his recovery. Perhaps Dong Bong-su’s insect consumption would not stop until every last insect in this place had been wiped out.

Squeak.

As he caught insects with slow movements, rats came into his view. If he could catch rats, he would be able to recover his stamina more quickly. However, with a body that still did not move as he intended, he could not catch rats that fled so nimbly.

If he could catch rats, he might be able to learn a new rule of New Murim Online. According to the results of his experiments, no matter how many insects he killed, his experience did not increase. But rodents about the size of rats might affect experience.

Still, it was too much for now.

The moment he recognized that he could not catch rats yet, he stopped all actions. Dong Bong-su was not foolish enough to waste unnecessary strength on things that would not work.

There was nothing left for him to do inside this filthy stable. Letting go of every thread of thought once more, he fell asleep. If he ate well and slept well, he would probably be able to fully recover his stamina within a few weeks. From then on, he would be able to set out in earnest to investigate New Murim Online.

Before long, only the quiet rustling sounds of horses once again settled over the stable.

● ● ●

Several weeks later, Dong Bong-su had almost recovered his stamina. It was now enough that there was no major hindrance to his activities. His chest still throbbed slightly whenever he moved, but he could more than manage daily life. Even so, whenever it was time for Machil to come, he invariably wrapped the straw rope around his chest and lay down. This was because he was still not ready to go outside.

There was far too much to learn—this place’s language, lifestyle, geography, culture, and more. The biggest problem was that ‘this body’ was still weak.

The Dong Bong-su of modern Earth had been a powerhouse of that world, armed with all kinds of martial arts and all kinds of knowledge.

Then what about this body?

Sosam—that is, the previous owner of this body—had been someone at the very bottom of this world called murim, possessing nothing at all, and his physique was also insignificant. One might think it had been hardened through all kinds of hard labor, but instead, his body had been damaged in many places due to hardship.

Until he resolved these problems, he had no intention of leaving this place, the Danri Family. If he went out into that world beyond, called the Martial World, in his current state, survival would be difficult to guarantee. Dong Bong-su was not reckless enough to entrust his body to uncertain circumstances.

Even so, he could not lie around like this indefinitely. If he continued in this manner without being of help to the family, he would eventually be cast out. He had to endure just enough to avoid that fate. He needed to buy time, but not get kicked out.

During that time, he also needed to gradually grasp the New Murim Online system. He had not yet figured out much. What he had discovered all related to the inventory. The other windows were still hiding themselves behind armor called ‘?’. Perhaps as he leveled up, they would shed those covers one by one.

But he could not be certain that would be the case.

In the worst case, everything other than the inventory might be useless. If that happened, he would have to seek another way to become strong.

● ● ●

New Murim Online First Rule: The inventory is not slot-based but space-based. The space is a cube of one hundred meters, with equal width, length, and height.